


Singing on Saturday

by Rubynye



Category: DC Comics
Genre: Gen, Teen Titans - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-12
Updated: 2010-01-12
Packaged: 2017-10-06 05:08:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/49980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rubynye/pseuds/Rubynye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You aren't really a Titan till you rejoin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Singing on Saturday

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers For: _Nightwing 117_, OYL _Teen Titans_  
> Beta Reader and Brilliant Cheerer: [](http://sister-wolf.livejournal.com/profile)[**sister_wolf**](http://sister-wolf.livejournal.com/)   
> Huge Thanks To: [](http://derryderrydown.livejournal.com/profile)[**derryderrydown**](http://derryderrydown.livejournal.com/), who ran [](http://community.livejournal.com/jbbs/profile)[**jbbs**](http://community.livejournal.com/jbbs/), for which I wrote this, and [](http://tigerbright.livejournal.com/profile)[**tigerbright**](http://tigerbright.livejournal.com/) for convicing me to post this.

Title: Singing on Saturday   
Fandom: DC Comics   
Rating: PG-aught   
Summary: You aren't really a Titan till you rejoin.  
Characters: Dick, Rose, Roy

Disclaimer: Dick, Rose, Roy, the Titans, Bludhaven and New York all do not belong to me.

 

"Bullshit. There's no way the Titans will want me back." Rose kicks a loose chunk of rebar, stomping restlessly on the roof's edge. Once, twice, a kick for variety; Dick just folds his arms a little tighter and waits. Rose subsides pretty quickly, just standing there with her back to Dick; New York's neon and sodium light her from below, deepening her pout, hollowing her cheekbones, tinting her colorless hair blue-shadowed gold.

Dick breathes, counting off a few more seconds. The distant thud of the rebar on the sidewalk echoes faintly up between the buildings. "They'll take you back," he says, for approximately the thirty-seventh time.

"No fucking way," Rose insists faintly, for the thirty-eighth. "Last time they saw me I was trying to kill Raven. I nearly filleted Bart. And Superjerk--- dammit." She shakes her head, her hair tumbling in the wind between the skyscrapers. "If I call him that they'll beat the shit out of me. Even if I _don't_ call him that they'll never take me back."

Dick watches Rose's shoulders hunch inside her suit, and sighs. Next she'll bring up Bart's absence, and so on over and over again. If she takes off on her own Dick wouldn't give her a month before Slade breaks out and goes looking for her; the man's still got enough money to grease almost any lock, and Dick needs to count on futility to keep him in jail where security probably won't. Dick's supposed to meet Bruce and Tim in Antigua on Thursday, and he can't, and wouldn't, bring Rose with him. The Titans are the best place for her, the only place, but all his jokes about how "you aren't a real Titan until you rejoin" are falling on hard teenage ears.

So he sits on the squared-off lip of the roof, denim scraping familiarly against concrete. Dick swings his steel-toed boots in the breeze, remembering how the wind used to feel on his bare legs, just before he leaped down into it, following Batman, leading the Titans. "Hey," he says, amping up the warmth, and Rose glances back over her shoulder at him, her hair streaming like a flag, every scale on her armor edged with livid yellow glints. She's pretty enough to make him want to protect her, and Slade's child enough to need protection from herself, and both thoughts combine to make him choke back a sour laugh. Instead Dick smiles, adding a hefty dose of the old charm, and when Rose turns around he pats the concrete beside his hip. "Sit down, you're making me dizzy."

Rose smirks crookedly and starts back, walking on the edge of the roof like an imagined tightrope; her form would drop her off a real one in ten paces, but she's having fun showing off, and scolding her will just make her wall up again. Sitting down she tucks herself against Dick's side, and he lets her but keeps his hands in his lap. He's trying to keep out of trouble, after all.

Dick takes a breath, but it's Rose who speaks first. "New York City," she sing-songs, quoting a hundred movies and tunes, looking out at the city lights. "It's like... it's like Gotham, but brighter, y'know? And even bigger. I could just..."

Lose herself in it, he knows she wants to say, and sighs. Even disguised, even with her hair dyed and an animatronic eye, Rose Wilson would still be herself, still vulnerable to her father and to his allies. "San Francisco's a great town, too. Further away from Society HQ."

"Why do you even give a damn?" Rose whispers. The first time she asked that she included a kick; the fifth time she screamed it, the eleventh she threw a knife. They've been at this awhile.

The wind pouring through his hair, Dick stares down at the tiny cars and minuscule pedestrians,and spins the answer one more time. "Because I think you can be a hero, and a really good one." And because she needs someone, and it might as well be him.

Rose snorts, and laughs. "Yeah. Whatever. You and no one else, Renegade."

Dick elbows her, just hard enough to drive out a huff of air, and she inhales noisily and laughs again. "Nightwing, Rose," he corrects, but at least he manages to keep his voice mild. "I told you I left, right?"

"Yeah, _Nightwing_, Former-Boy-Wonder." Rose's tone is snide, but she doesn't lift her head. "The guy who founded the team, who used to be the original Robin. Of course you were gonna come back."

Dick wishes it had seemed that inevitable at the time. He wishes it felt that inevitable now "What about when I wasn't anybody? Just plain old Dick?"

Rose lifts her head now, looking at him with a wide blue eye. "What, like when you were a kid? My dad --" she remembers her determination to hate him, and pauses to make an elaborate face of disgust "--said you're a circus kid."

Yeah, and he'll tell her about that when it doesn't hurt quite so much. Maybe in twenty years. "I was, I am, but that's not what I meant. I meant after I stopped working with Batman."

"After you got fired," Rose says, narrowed eye glinting, because she wouldn't feel right if she didn't try to make him throw her off a roof at least once a day.

"Yes, Rose, after I got fired." Dick gives her the look that shuts her up, and it works one more time. "I went back to Titans Tower, even though I wasn't sure who I _was_ anymore." Rose rolls her eye, and drops her head on Dick's shoulder again. It seems strange to have a girl's head on his shoulder without wrapping his arm around her waist, but this girl's too young, and that's not what she needs from him. So Dick interweaves his fingers in his lap, and keeps talking.

 

_^*^_

_Robbie, or whatever you're calling yourself these days._ It's stupid, but Vic's words got stuck in Dick's head, echoing around at odd moments. That evening, between dinner and bed while everyone else was doing whatever, he ended up on the Tower roof, sitting on the edge with his hands in his jeans pockets, looking out at the dark water and the city lights and trying to think, not brood.

He wasn't Robin anymore. When he thought that, every time he thought it, Dick's new scar ached hollowly right through his shoulder. It's like the way he'd hurt sometimes, even after his broken bones and contusions healed, for some time after Two-Face had nearly beaten him to death. His arm had twinged off and on for over a year.

It's a lot like then; Bruce fired him then, too.

This time, though, Dick's not alone, and he's not a kid. He's got Kory and Donna, Gar and Vic, Wally and Raven and even their sassy little Terra. He's got the Titans.

But how long can he have them, if he's not a hero? And he can't be a hero in plainclothes, as Dick Grayson, not the way the Titans do things. Dick Grayson's just a wealthy man's former ward, grown up and cut loose. A rich, useless nobody.

Dick's hand was hurting, sharp across his palm. He glanced down and found the steel edge denting his hand clenched tight around it; when he pulled his fingers up the breeze was cool across the hot diagonal bruise along his lifeline. _Great job, Grayson_, he thought, shaking his hand out, getting precisely nowhere on figuring himself out up here on the roof's edge.

"Don't jump!" rang out from behind him, in a very familiar tenor drawl.

Dick snorted, turning just enough to glance back over his shoulder. "Hi, Roy."

"Hey, Boy Wonder." Roy loped up, in his Speedy tunic and jeans, and dropped his legs over the edge as he sat beside Dick. Dick suppressed a little flare of worry; Roy may not have been the acrobat he was, but the guy could definitely take care of himself. "How's it going?"

"Not so wonderful." Dick stared out at the city across the water, its twinkle and shine, and thought of Gotham from skyscraper height. New York was almost close enough to stave off the homesickness. Almost. "I'm not Robin anymore."

"Yeah, the Titans told me." Roy paused, just a second or two but still a tell, and asked, "What're you gonna do now?"

"That," Dick sighed, "is the question." The rustling breeze almost hid the sound of Roy breathing.

At least, until Roy snorted. "I hope it ends up being something other than sitting around being maudlin."

Dick clenched his teeth on the first three replies, and didn't knock Roy off the roof. "What am I supposed to do, then? Not care about having my identity taken from me?"

Dick winced at his own self-pity echoing on the wind, and Roy snorted again. "I dunno, Dick. But if you popped me in the nose that'd at least be _doing_ something."

"No, it wouldn't." Dick flopped back onto the roof, tucking his hands under his head. From the edge of his eye he could see Roy, half-turned, silhouetted against the distant lights. "And I can't just take off without a plan."

Roy nodded. "Now you sound like Robin."

"Who I'm not any more." High above the light pollution, between some fast-skidding scraps of cloud, a few stars twinkled. "I'm just Dick."

"And you sound oh-so-psyched about it, too." Grin sharp and shining, Roy leaned back, planting his hand. "What do you want, then, Grayson? Wanna be 'just Dick'?"

And do what, go back to walking on the ground? It's not like Haly's needed Dick, the Soaring Sullivans had a great act on their own. "I should---"

"The hell with 'should', what do you want?" When Dick looked up, Roy wasn't grinning anymore.

And, well, the problem was, he wanted something the most important person in his world had decided he was no longer fit for. "I don't..." And the worst part was disagreeing with him on that. Unless it was knowing that deep down, he actually might not. "I don't know."

"Well, then. Go find out." Roy said it like it was all so simple.

"I can't just _leave_! The Titans---"

"So you're gonna stay here, and watch every time the team takes off on a mission? Or you'll hero in street clothes? I bet Batman'll _love_ that. I can see him glaring now." Dick had to snicker. And had to bite his lip as his gut twisted. Yeah, Bruce wouldn't exactly approve, and it really wouldn't be safe, for anyone. He thought of the Gotham crazies showing up at the Manor, Alfred opening the door to Ivy or Two-Face or the Joker, and couldn't smile at all.

Instead, Dick sat up again, sucking in a deeper breath. "Yeah, you're right, Wise Man Harper." Roy snickered triumphantly, but he'd earned it. "I just don't know, though. People've quit, people've come back, but has anyone ever gone from one identity to another?"

"I dunno myself," Roy shrugged. "If I were you, I'd probably go talk to Hal. I almost think you want someone who never was a sidekick to start with--"

And there it was, and Dick could all but see the broad welcoming smile. Occasionally, Roy was really brilliant; when Dick grabbed his shoulders, he stopped on a sound rather like an 'eep'. "Roy, that's _perfect!_"

"What's -- well, yeah, of course." Roy grinned at Dick, his eyes round and confused. "Mind telling me what it is, though?"

"Who I should talk to!" Dick squeezed Roy's shoulders and let him go. "Someone who was never a sidekick, who made himself, and who Batman can't get to at all." Who'd welcome Dick no matter what. "I should talk to Superman."

"There you go!" Dick bounced to his feet; Roy scrambled up after him, wobbling a little on the roof's edge, so Dick reached out and caught his wrist, and Roy turned his hand to grab Dick's as he braced himself. "Thanks. And yeah, that is a great idea."

"Thank _you_," Dick replied, smiling more easily than he'd been able to in what felt like forever. "You're a great Agony Aunt."

"Archery, counseling, I do it all." Roy bowed, flourishing an imaginary replacement for his missing hat, his other hand still gripping Dick's wrist.

Dick squeezed hard in reply, and Roy tilted his head a little as he smiled wider, and then let go. "C'mon, Speedy, let's go in," Dick said, grinning wider when Roy punched him lightly on the arm, and draped that arm round Roy's shoulders. "I'd better tell the Titans."

_^*^_

 

"If I could go back, you can go back." Dick winds the story up with a helpful moral, and hopes Rose is worn out enough not to head the other way just for the obstinate hell of it.

"That is _such_ complete and utter crap," Rose says, but she's smiling, and laughing by the fourth word; she breaks into giggles, leaning away from Dick, and there they go, he's won. He gives Rose a shoulder-squeeze for positive reinforcement, which may not have been the best idea since she pretty much flattens herself against his side, and her armor lets through a lot of body heat.

On the other hand, how many hugs does she get from people not trying to turn her evil? "Nah," he says, with an extra little squeeze, "go talk to Raven." Rose snorts long and expressively, but Dick keeps going before she comes up with a retort. "She's not holding a grudge about what Deathstroke put you up to; she understands having an evil father."

"And she nearly killed you all, what, twice? So it's not like she's one to talk."

"I'm glad you're up on your history." Dick sighs and redirects. "And... talk to Robin, too. He could use a friend these days."

His pride at fixing two problems with one patch swells when Rose sits up, peels herself off his side and thoughtfully murmurs, "Yeah, I can do that." Then it goes 'pop' when she wiggles a little as she adds, "He likes girls with light hair, doesn't he?"

"Um." Maybe Dick had better just let that one go. He blinks and stands up, and Rose looks up at him, the young curve of her cheek outlined in city lights. "C'mon, let's get going. We've got a flight to catch to San Francisco, right?"

"Oh, all right." Rose grins over her tone of fake resignation. "Race you to your place!" She jumps off the roof with a shriek, doing a somersault before pulling out her line. Dick shakes his head, smiling helplessly, and takes off after Rose.


End file.
